


Unnatural History

by Yubari (aquila_black)



Category: Loveless
Genre: Meta, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-09-24
Updated: 2009-09-24
Packaged: 2018-03-26 04:11:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3836563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aquila_black/pseuds/Yubari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some characterization talk for Soubi RPers that I wrote in response to an RP Advice Meme ask. I am re-posting it here because I think other Loveless fic writers might also find it interesting. Some of how I'd describe things about Soubi has changed over time, admittedly, but this is what I wrote on his worldview and state of mind in 2009.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unnatural History

First of all, I'd suggest that you read this interview with Kouga Yun http://community.livejournal.com/raburesu/166893.html 

Soubi is (in large measure) the product of long-term, systematic abuse. _He doesn't realize this_. As much as you, the mun, may want to get angsty or self-righteous about what's been done to him, he wouldn't. Take a good, hard look at the name carved into his throat, and the fact that he considers it an honor, a cherished connection to his master. He’s willing to defend those markings, even to Ritsuka, and he completely dismisses Kio’s objections. 

Especially over the first half of the manga, Soubi is not receptive to other people’s interpretations. He takes their alarm over his relationship with Seimei as proof that they don’t understand, live in a completely different (if overlapping) world, etc. He’s convinced that he knows better. If you’re playing him after he found out that Seimei abandoned him, you can get away with less certainty on his part. But keep in mind that Soubi is very, very good at what he does; a fighter of great renown. He doesn’t openly contradict Ritsuka’s odd notions because he considers his Sacrifice his superior –but there’s a certain amount of rationalizing on his part; a definite sense that he knows how things should be, and needs to gently bring the boy around. 

He’s not a masochist, but he sometimes comes off as such because love and pain are all woven together in his mind. Ritsu took him in, taught him, brainwashed him, whipped him, raped him, gave him away to Seimei … and he was Soubi’s guardian ever since his parents died. I really can’t stress this enough, but a lot of people play his past as something he can overcome through the Power of Love and the purity of Ritsuka, (at least, long enough to have lots of steamy, fluff-tastic sex) and it just isn’t going to happen. At least, not without _a lot_ of serious character development. You're rp-ing a person who has spent the past fourteen years of his life fighting, training, and serving a master, and he's only twenty years old. 

Despite his familiar “suki da yo,” it’s not entirely clear that Soubi is capable of love, or has the faintest idea what that actually means. He was ordered to love Ritsuka –which yes, also hints at Seimei’s utter lack of understanding when it comes to human emotions- but my point is that he isn’t … he has no concept of himself as a person. Soubi clings to his Sacrifice the way you’d cling to the only thing keeping your head above water. They are his reason for existing, whether you’re referring to Ritsu (long time ago), Seimei (in recent memory), or Ritsuka. 

But especially in Ritsuka’s case, because they have such a hard time communicating and knowing what to reasonably expect from each other, it’s hard to call what Soubi feels for him “love,” or explain their relationship in simple terms. At first, their single point of contact, the one person they both hinged on, was Seimei. 

It’s easy to romanticize what they have together, especially as Soubi insists on talking to Ritsuka as if they were already a bonded pair. But the distance between them isn’t entirely due to Ritsuka’s ambivalence about owning Soubi. Although Soubi is (by our standards) unfailingly respectful, he has also been secretive, manipulative, and arguably untrustworthy with Ritsuka. It’s as if he’s trying to get his Sacrifice to react in a way that he can understand; as a master. Seimei would never stand for his omissions and disappearances and switched-off phone. And when Ritsuka’s sufficiently ticked off, he doesn’t either. So there’s an unspoken struggle beneath their interactions: whose perception is going to be validated? I don’t think that Soubi is being intentionally willful, though. It’s more that he doesn’t feel safe, doesn’t feel connected to anyone unless there's an invisible chain around his neck. 

Soubi wants to be ordered, disciplined, held, and kept for ever and ever. The fact that he keeps being transferred from owner to owner eats away at his sense of self worth. Overall, he doesn’t need a lot of reassurance. He doesn’t mind the disapproval of other fighters, the harsh severity that often characterizes his Sacrifices, or the fact that people in general consider him rude, unpleasant, and varying degrees of creepy. But the idea that a fighter belongs to their sacrifice _and that bond is for life_ is extremely important to him. 

After he lost both his parents in a car accident when he was six, being transferred from Ritsu to Seimei was traumatic. After losing Seimei as well … it’s fair to say that Soubi has serious abandonment issues. You can play his touchy-feely behavior with Ritsuka in many different ways, but there’s desperation in it; he’s physically confirming that his Sacrifice is alive and well and right there, close enough to kiss and snuggle. It’s something that Soubi curbs when it bothers Ritsuka, something he needs less as their relationship deepens, but it isn’t something he ever really gets enough of. And since Ritsuka has issues of his own that center around feeling unwanted, he tends to reject the attention vociferously and still put up with a lot more than most twelve year old boys would. 

Soubi’s absolute shamelessness with regard to his Sacrifice is one of the hardest things to play. He has no regard for the fact that a normal person would be self-conscious about acknowledging someone else’s ownership, stripping on command in a public place, or nuzzling a twelve-year-old. Soubi acts like an affection-starved pet around Ritsuka. There’s more to that than calling him “master,” though. You have to make it perfectly obvious that Soubi is utterly at ease with being used. Everyone else’s discomfort plays off of the simple fact that the person who should be the least okay with all of this is actively enabling and re-creating an abusive relationship, where there is the possibility of something new. 

Soubi really is blind in that respect. It’s his life, but he doesn’t own it. Even with a Sacrifice who is willing to treat him like an equal, he has no idea how to be one. In some ways, Ritsu really did a number on him. In others, though, he couldn’t have done it without Soubi’s help. It adds literal insult to injury that Soubi doesn’t even know. But figuring that out … realizing that all the pain and effort and self-discipline and justification and mental contortion he’s put himself through were for nothing, because he should have been treated like a person regardless of how well he fought and followed orders … might well break him. Whether that needs to happen before he can change in a significant way is debatable, but there's a particular kind of deep loss that comes with understanding you weren't wrong, when that means that people who were all you had, people that you want to feel close to, were callous and unloving. (When you've been lying to yourself and justifying what they did as hard as you could.)

Ritsuka expressed a little of it in the library of Seven Voices, when he thought to himself "Seimei is alive. And that means I know what it is to be surrounded by lies and betrayals." Soubi would be feeling that multiplied by 1000 if something really made him question how much he's been dehumanized, and how much he cooperated with it and bought into the ideology of the people who used him. "This is what I'm for" can make everything make sense, and reconsidering that later can set you against every self-destructive impulse you have. If you go that way with your characterization, really try to understand how much it's going to make his programming attempt to destroy him. Both - the stuff Ritsu inculcated, and the underlying self that's likely to be FURIOUS with him for going as far as he did in one direction and then hitting reverse. There's a reason butterflies only undergo metamorphosis once.

The flip side to Soubi's flawless submission is his inability to function without commands. He doesn’t know what to do when his Sacrifice treats him with even a little respect and consideration. Rather than being grateful or considering that maybe he’s worth something, (as someone with less extensive abuse might) Soubi shies away from Ritsuka’s attempts to befriend him, in an eyes-squeezed-shut “my master wants something that I am incapable of providing” sort of way. The fact that his Sacrifice keeps expecting him to act like a person, when he’s been trained to see himself as a sort of animate _thing_ is a source of stress. 

That said, we only get the full effect of Soubi’s vulnerable side around Ritsuka. It’s easy to forget how strong he is because he routinely bends to the will of this tattered wisp of a boy. It's easy to forget how callous he can be with other people because he’s so scrupulously tender with his Sacrifice. But remember his reputation with the other art students, his encounter with Shinonome-sensei, and the utter contempt he has for Ritsuka’s mother. Soubi can be as harsh as any of his partners, when faced with people he considers insubstantial; proud and cruel. He is unapologetically judgmental, and anyone (like Kio) who tries to get close to him despite his indifference to them is going to have to overlook a blunt, acerbic unfriendliness, at best. He’s a very private person, and tends to get along better with kids than he does with adults. 

Soubi is also, despite being a talented artist, willing to subordinate every aspect of his normal life to the needs and wants of his Sacrifice. Kio has called him to task several times for brushing off assignments or doing things with Ritsuka when he should be studying for exams. He’s missed classes because he was injured. I’m guessing he missed classes when Seimei died and when he took Ritsuka to Goura. And his response to all of this is generally complete indifference. We know what he draws when he’s unhappy. According to Kio, it’s his best work. But … painting is what he does when he isn’t doing anything important. When his Sacrifice doesn’t have any particular need of him and there’s nothing (as a fighter) that he should be doing. Whether you want to play that to full effect is a matter of personal preference, but it’s worth keeping in mind how secondary his public persona is. 

Despite his own absolute submission to Ritsuka, Soubi does not just accept hierarchies in a general sense. He takes particular issue with anyone who wields authority over Ritsuka. In Misaki’s case, his protectiveness is absolutely justified. (Though even there, it’s excessive – you really get to see the fighter mindset in action when he offers to kill her.) In Shinonome-sensei’s case, though, it’s evident just how much teachers push his buttons, regardless of what they’re like. Soubi’s very suspicious of her, very cynical. Even without knowing anything about her, he’s willing to hurt her just because he can. Later, when he stopped the Zero boys from assaulting her, it’s fairly plain that he only did this because he thought Ritsuka would want him to. The task itself was distasteful. 

Hah, speaking of which, if you’re playing Soubi across from a Ritsu, be prepared to play him at his most expressive. He resents his old teacher deeply, and is more overtly hostile with him than he’d ever be with Seimei or Ritsuka. And yet, Ritsu probably knows him better than anyone. Their relationship contains a tension that currently manifests as dislike, on Soubi’s side, because it can’t afford to be longing. Missing his teacher would be disloyal to his sacrifice. Soubi’s expectations, though, have everything to do with Ritsu –what he demands of himself and the sorts of bond that he craves owe _so much_ to how he was taught. Deep down where neither of them are willing to look at it, there’s an underlying regret: I would have been perfect for you. Still, keep in mind that most things with Soubi are understated, if they’re at all important. His feelings run deep, but he’s not about to accuse his teacher, or admit that he’s … more than annoyed with him. Remember the scene where Seimei ordered Soubi to break the window, and he did so –and subsequently went into a numb state of saying “no”? (Have a bath. No. Come to bed. No.) For anyone else, it would have been a perfectly normal exchange. For Soubi, being so out of it that he said _no_ to Ritsuka amounted to a serious breakdown. So – he can say more to Ritsu than he can to just about anybody, and with more aggression, but that doesn’t mean that he’s going to start yelling or anything. Keep it IC.

What else … ah. As far as Soubi consciously acknowledges, Seimei owns him, heart and soul. Writers or rp-ers sometimes overlook this inconvenient fact by making him miraculously transfer all allegiance to Ritsuka. As often as not, Ritsuka also discovers that he doesn’t want to have anything more to do with his horrible brother. While this is terribly good for wishful shipping, _they’re throwing out the only reason Soubi ever looked twice at Ritsuka_. And the only reason Ritsuka didn’t decide Soubi was a weird, pedo creep. All in one, fell swoop. So, while Seimei is not the Loveless team’s favorite person these days, and you can believably have them working against each other, Ritsuka’s and Soubi’s feelings for a person who has been absolutely central to both their lives are not going to just evaporate. And you might want to think twice about making every memory Soubi has of Seimei be really awful. In the manga, they were known as an invincible team. There’s a radiant presence about Soubi in the flashbacks to that time, especially the one where he tells Kio not to feel sorry for his injuries; a real sense of confidence, purpose, and “I have value” that he loses later on.

**Doing it wrong:**

Soubi is not a universal uke; there are characters he can and does dominate with ease, and resolve alone doesn’t impress him. This isn’t a character who ever felt like he had a choice about who his master was, so he isn’t going to transfer his allegiance from a Loveless-canon character to the first arrogant seme who comes along. Even if he’s half dead from the lack of a partner and a purpose in life, he has more discipline than that.

Soubi is not particularly promiscuous. The fact that he radiates unfulfilled sexuality and single-minded adoration for his sacrifice may attract many prospective bed-mates in an rp setting, but that said, Soubi’s body doesn’t belong to him. Without explicit orders in this respect, he’s likely to be completely celibate; not to mention extremely cold to anyone who can’t take a hint. He’s not the type to do something because it feels good or because he cares what the other person wants or thinks. And while he’s likely to do whatever his sacrifice tells him, by whatever means they suggest, keep in mind that Soubi has all sorts of relevant skills. If you have him trading sex for something that could be gotten any other way (including emotional manipulation, word-spells, telepathy, or magical persuasion) you’re probably doing it wrong. 

Soubi is not a docile, mindless instrument of someone else’s will – though he often portrays himself this way. Especially where Ritsuka is concerned, give him an inch and he’ll take a mile. Soubi doesn’t feel like he can just _ask_ his sacrifice for what he wants, and expect to get it. Even when he’s after something relatively small, he will almost always disguise his actual objective. Some of the things he tells Ritsuka are contradictory and almost incomprehensible – because Soubi is primarily misdirecting the boy’s attention. Often his goal is touch; or an emotional reaction (not necessarily positive). Sometimes it’s as simple as taking strength from the sight of his sacrifice, but not wanting to reveal that he’s weak enough to crave it. If you go over the canon with a fine toothed comb, you’ll find orders Soubi that obeys without question, and orders that he keeps trying to work around, like Ritsuka’s insistence that he be honest. The ones he flat-out disobeys are generally related to his fear of not being good enough – he’s really scared that if his sacrifice sees his shortcomings clearly, he’ll be judged, rejected, and discarded.

If you’ve done your homework, the fact that Soubi is neither attracted to children (per se) nor attracted to pain should need no further explanation. 

As a final note, it helps to consider Soubi on his own terms, without assuming that he’ll relate to things the way any normal, sane person would. From your own point of view, there’s probably no question that rape is bad. From Soubi’s, though, what would consensual sex even look like?


End file.
